Local-issue electioneering is cheating Europe’s voters

EUROPE is trying to forget that it has a historic election in two weeks – to choose the Parliament of the newly enlarged EU – given the risk that an unprecedently low turnout would spoil the celebration.

A new Eurobarometer survey, ordered by the Parliament and set to be unveiled at the end of this week, will show that even fewer citizens in new member states are going to cast their ballots for the first European election in which they are eligible to vote than in the ‘old’ EU-15.

A separate Union-wide poll published by Gallup and Sofres last week found that just 45% of respondents were certain to vote.

Voter indifference in the new states is set to be the biggest slap in Parliament’s face, as it would deprive MEPs from one easy argument they have traditionally used to explain low turnout: voters’ boredom.

But the new EU citizens are not bored of Europe, as they have just enthusiastically backed, in referenda, their countries’ accession to the EU. In addition, the Union is too new for them to have yet experienced fatigue – as opposed to those citizens in old member states who grew up with the benefits of membership and allegedly began to take it for granted.

Indeed, MEPs should be deeply embarrassed if those who fervently desired to join the EU for decades ignore the Parliament.

At a first glance, this seems to be a paradox. The EU is popular with its new citizens and the Parliament is a success story, since it is the only institution whose powers have dramatically increased from almost nothing to those of an assembly scrutinizing four-fifths of the Union’s legislation. So there are strong reasons to motivate citizens to vote.

But the main cause for low turnout is the failure of candidates in the 10-13 June elections to grab peoples’ attention.

Aspiring MEPs have been unable to persuade the electorate of the real European stakes of these elections, despite demagogic pleas urging people to vote. They are running misleading campaigns based on domestic concerns, not the issues they will be called to debate once elected. By focusing their campaigns on local or national issues, such as better pensions or more schools for their region, wannabe MEPs are cheating on the electorate – because these issues would be none of their business once elected and do not reflect deputies’ job descriptions.

They seek to be elected on pledges they will not be able to fulfil – because they would fall outside their remit. In addition, they are not putting their programmes as future MEPs under voters’ scrutiny, as they should do to allow voters to make an informed choice.

By not running a European campaign, political parties fail to highlight the distinctiveness of these polls. It is not surprising, then, that people decide not to take part: they feel this election is a repeat of previous local, regional or national polls, on similar issues, in which they have already cast their vote.

If contested on national platforms, the European elections will look superfluous to most of the 350 million voters.

These polls are supposed to transcend national issues and tackle common concerns, such as immigration, competitiveness, further EU enlargement and the European constitution – set to be adopted four days after the elections.

In addition, appointing the next president of the European Commission should be top of the electoral platform of each political party. Candidates should clearly state during their campaign whom they would support for the Commission’s presidency if their political group were to have the majority in the assembly.

Not only would this raise the stakes for the election, it would also introduce more transparency to the obscure selection procedure for the Union’s top post. And it would avoid the likelihood that the most influential person in the EU’s institutions will be appointed after an unedifying round of horse-trading by tired national leaders at the end of a summit.

The keynote speaker at the 20th anniversary celebration of the European Medicines Agency offered some challenges to conventional thinking about the next 20 years – including carefully calculated provocations of his hosts.